Drinks advice

Roast chicken and mushrooms with González Byass Vina AB 12Y Amontillado Seco

On the plate are pieces of oven-roasted chicken, with fried mushrooms and a sauce made from the roasting juices with sherry. Opposite it the Vina AB offers a dry amontillado of at least twelve years, with hazelnut and wood, which carries the sauce on into the glass.

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Roast chicken and mushrooms
Photo: dpstyles™, CC BY 2.0

From the shelf

The bottle

Vina AB comes from González Byass in Jerez de la Frontera and is a dry amontillado of one hundred percent Palomino Fino. The wine matures for at least twelve years in American oak in the solera system and goes through the two phases that belong to this style: first biological under the velo de flor, then oxidative with air contact. This shows in the colour, which runs from light topaz to amber, and in the aroma of hazelnut with a yeasty undertone. The bottle is 16.5 percent alcohol and holds 37 centilitres.

González Byass Vina AB 12Y Amontillado Seco

The combination

Why this works together

Poultry and mushrooms are the two dishes that the Consejo Regulador names for amontillado, and here they lie together on the plate. Chicken is a meat with little acidity of its own and a lot of savouriness, and mushrooms add an earthy, almost meaty depth to that; that asks not for fruit but for a wine that itself comes from ageing. The Vina AB brings that: from the years under the flor comes a yeasty, nutty sharpness, from the years with air contact comes the dark wood tone. Because the wine is dry, the mushroom remains the savoury party and no sweet layer is laid over the dish. The weight is right from two sides as well: 16.5 percent is heavier than a fino and light enough to stay beside chicken, and the sauce with sherry makes the same movement in the glass and on the plate.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 1 hour and 30 minutes
  • Type main course

What you need

  • 1 chicken of about 1.5 kg
  • 50 ml olive oil
  • 100 ml dry sherry
  • 100 ml chicken stock
  • half a tablespoon of cornflour
  • 400 g chestnut mushrooms or mixed mushrooms, in thick slices
  • 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
  • salt and pepper

How to make it

  1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Pat the chicken dry, season it inside with salt and pepper and truss it.
  2. Heat the olive oil in an ovenproof dish and turn the chicken in it until it is coated with oil all over.
  3. Place the dish in the oven with the chicken on one thigh and roast for fifteen minutes. Turn it onto the other thigh and roast for another fifteen minutes. Finally, turn it onto its back and roast for another fifteen minutes.
  4. Meanwhile fry the mushrooms with the garlic in a large frying pan for two to three minutes over high heat and sprinkle them with salt and pepper.
  5. Take the chicken out of the dish and keep it warm. Put the dish with the cooking juices on the heat, pour in the sherry and reduce it by half.
  6. Dissolve the cornflour in the chicken stock, pour it into the cooking juices and let the sauce simmer gently for five minutes until it thickens. Serve the chicken with the mushrooms and the sauce.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this amontillado between 12 and 14 degrees; González Byass itself uses 8 to 12 degrees, so slightly cooler is fine too. Use a white wine glass or a catavinos of about 200 millilitres, filled by a third, so you can smell the hazelnut and the wood. An opened amontillado keeps well for about two months, stored closed and cool; with the half bottle of 37 centilitres that rarely matters in practice.

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